


Reunited

by Shad_Geek



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:35:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24150670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shad_Geek/pseuds/Shad_Geek
Summary: Just after GLaDOS is reawakened, Chell is thrown back into the testing tracks. But with much of the facility still unreachable to the AI, there are many secrets to be found still hidden in the walls. Chell stumbles upon one of these secrets and meets a long gone friend.
Kudos: 32





	Reunited

The facility hummed. Much louder than it had done just hours before. It felt normal, natural. Though no matter how much Chell felt sickened for missing it, the noise was still comforting as if telling her she wasn't alone. Pretty sad seeing how she was the only person under the ground for miles. 

Light poured in from the broken and cracked ceiling, bathing the tiled floor in pale gold. She often paused to stare at these small patches, reaching out into the rays of sun, marveling at how it reflected off her gray fingers. The last time she had seen light was at the surface. But even that encounter with the outside world had been muddled due to "brain damage". She looked up towards the source of the light and quickly looked down. Her eyes were always adjusted to the cold colors and dark shadows of what the Enrichment Center always was. 

Warmth filled her but dissipated once her hand retreated back into the shadows. Chell's mind wandered far above the facility's decaying walls, towards the sun. Oh, how desperately she wanted to stand in the full light, smelling the moist air and living life as a human would. But she was stuck here, hopelessly dreaming about a silly need. She couldn't let herself do that. It would make her waste away in here. 

Forlorn, she abandoned the rays of light and continued on through the dappled corridor. 

The tests this time around, had been incredibly easy. Though they were perfect replicas, maybe the exact same, of the ones she had previously gone through. She wasn't complaining, as this was the perfect way to jog her memory. And these tests had a higher survival rate, which she appreciated.

Now, the most wondrous aspect of these test chambers were the state of them. The paneled walls were broken, revealing the rest of the facility if one must peeked out. It was scary to see how endless this place was and how small and insignificant one would be. Aside from the chilling realization that she was no more than an ant staring down hundreds of pairs of stomping boots, there were other, more welcoming aspects to the holes.

There were small passages, chambers, rooms. The possibly existed for years without the all-seeing eye knowing. They were forgotten corners of the facility, only visited once in decades. Whenever she found these small corridors, Chell felt her heart rise in her chest. She wasn't alone as she stared at murals. She wasn't alone when she picked up an empty can labeled "BEANS". She wasn't alone. Her artistic friends were probably long gone, but their spirits and stories lingered. A comforting reminder that she hadn't been alone.

Those thoughts of forgotten guides had vanished once she entered the next test chamber. It was larger than the last with another laser. The sound of sizzling wallpaper filled the room as the red laser continued to cut into a black paneled wall. Past that, was a blocked section protecting a cube with glass sides. She probably needed that to direct the beam into a nearby socket. It was the only logical thing to do.

So with a plan of attack set firmly in her head, Chell raised her dual portal device and popped a portal into the barricaded room before placing the other underneath herself. Under her feet a blue portal punched into existence and the ground fell away. She plummeted towards the ceiling feet first and tried to right herself up before falling back through the orange portal and back out the blue. She had been extremely rusty and now her head was beginning to dance in circles as her feet were where her head should've been and her head where her feet had been. 

After ten seconds of disoriented, awkward falling, she managed to find solid ground on the side of the orange portal. Chell very well knew that she was going to be put through that again, as her only goal in this small room was to retrieve the cube. That sure was a lot of trouble for something as trivial as that. 

It took her a moment to figure out what was up and what was down. Once her head stopped spinning from the free fall, she cautiously moved around the portal and to the cube. Once that was done, she turned back towards the hole in reality to jump in.

But she stopped, noticing a gap between the panels. It was large enough to crawl through. Well— large enough if she moved the large chunk of broken panel away from the opening. 

Intrigued, she released the cube from the portal gun's gasped and set the smooth gun on top of it, giving her access to both of her free hands. Chell kneeled down beside it, trying to find the best spot to put her hands against the white surface. It shifted. If she could just push into it, it would fall over. With a grunt, she managed to push the fragmented panel over, which fell to the floor with a noisy clatter.

Once hidden by the panel, Chell could see small arrows in black and orange paint point to the small opening. Wonder welled up in her, begging her to go. She reached out with her right hand, now free from the portal device, and felt the drawings. The paint was dry, old. Just like any other mural she stumbled across. 

It still didn't stop her. She turned away from the hole to grab her gun, not wanting to part ways with it if something went wrong. With it back in the snug grip of her right hand, Chell turned back to the hole and crawled through it. 

It was a small tunnel, the black panels pressing in on every side of her. Chell's eyes were trained ahead at the light spilling into the end of it. She strained her ears for the familiar buzz of the radio that would more often than not be present at these small dens. Though she didn't except to hear muttering.

She stopped, hallway between the entrance and exit of this small shaft. Who was there? She was the only person here, right? For as long as thirty seconds, she stood there, frozen in a crouch while an argument blazed in her mind.

In the end, she pressed forward.

Every inch she moved closer to the end, the muttering grew louder. It sounded panicked, calm, angry, pleading, happy, sad. It held every emotion one could have, all jammed into a continuous line of intelligible gibberish. It paused every once in a while, as if having a conversation with a silent someone.

Chell reached the end of the tunnel, finally looking out into the room it lead to. It was brightly lit through a large hole gaping in the ceiling, though a tangle of wires had caused the light to dapple on the mossy ground. White portal surfaces were propped up along the walls, some stacked on top of one another. This had to be a storage place for them. 

What immediately drew her eyes was a figure at the far end of the room, its back to her. They appeared to be tall despite being hunched over with their messy black haired head down. They sported a white lab coat, dirty and stained with years of filth. Beside them, was an all too familiar cube with hearts on its sides instead of Aperture's infamous logo. 

The man was continuing to mutter. His arms moved in a sweeping manner, either making hand gestures to communicate what his voice could not or was painting something. 

Painting. 

The pieces clicked together in Chell's mind. Where has she seen that mural of a man holding a cube eerily like the one accompanying him? The hair, it matched a painting she had seen before. Those cans and jugs of water littering the ground around him. Chell had seen them before. Everything in this room bore resemblance to the same unseen friend that had guided her and saved her life.

In awe, she crept out into a standing position, making her way towards the crazed man like a ghost. It felt as if she were stuck in a dream, where she felt as light as air. One of the true mysteries that she was wanted to discover, the one man she owed her life to. 

He didn't notice her until she sat down beside him. The man had a scraggly beard, short and messy, as if he had been using shards of glass to keep it from getting too long. There were bags under his eyes, red and swollen, as if the idea of sleep were foreign to him. Much like Chell's, his skin was pale and gray, with blue lips and a red nose. His wide eyes flickered across the panel now turned canvas, his small pupils twitching each time he uttered more unknown phrases. 

His gaze shot at her as his head snapped jerkily in her direction. He stopped talking and his wide eyes grew wider as he stared searchingly at her face. The reality clicked into his head and his once dumbfounded expression turned into one of joy.

"YOU!" he exclaimed, lunging forward at a speed that shouldn't be achieved by any human. Before Chell had any time to react, he was on her, pulling her into a bone-crushing hug. His long fingers dug into her shirt, clamping tight with no showing of letting go. His forehead rested on her shoulder as he started to speak in rapid gibberish, his voice hitched and high. She was frozen, no idea of what to do.

After what felt like ten hours, or it could've only been five minutes, the man finally let go of her, his face alight with a childish joy. 

She was able to breathe again. Chell took some steadying breaths as he began to talk in fast gibberish again. She was only able to make out a few words such as, "you", "alive", "cake", "fault", and "happy". 

He began to jabber loudly again, turning his attention back to the mural in front of him. Chell followed his eyes to it. She stared at an open field of golden something. But it had to be from the outside world as the man smeared a blue hand above it, making a sky. But that was quickly abandoned as he wiped his hand on the ground and his fingers dove for the small black paint can that smelled oddly like charcoal. In a frantic manner, he quickly created a person standing in front of it. There were no discernible features but the way it seemed to carry itself eerily reminded it of her. Chell glanced at the man, wondering how he knew her so well when they've only come face to face now.

Or maybe they had before. They could've met and she hadn't remembered it. The core who had been helping her had said when they first met that she "had a very minor case of serious brain damage". Though how excited this man was, she figured that they never met, although indirectly through his murals.

Chell released the portal gun. It sat in her lap as she leaned forward and pointed at the silhouette of herself. The man grinned and nodded as confirmation. The black smudge was her. 

She extended a hand, looking imploringly at the paints scattered around him. With a sound like a yip and a weird cluck that oddly sound like "yes", the man pushed the nearest paints to her. 

The ones she had been given were black and blue. Though she only needed the black paint to convey this message. It was strange, finally meeting the man that had helped her so many times. There wasn't anything she could do to pay him back except...

She chose the next panel over, not wanting to get in the way of his drawing. Chell shifted to the side, followed by the eager black-haired scientist. She dipped her finger into the black paint. It was cold and made her skin tingle uncomfortably, but she pushed past it. Reaching up, she scribbled out two words that were remarkably messier than the man's own writing.

"Thank you."

The man looked at them and chuckled aloud. He nodded frantically in welcome and paused, glancing towards the Companion Cube as if it had said something. When he turned back around, he said something that sounded a lot like, "Of course" within the fast gibberish that spilled from his mouth.

She dipped her finger in the black paint again and returned to the canvas where she wrote her name. Only her first, since her last was lost to her, a mystery that she would never get to the bottom of as the eye hung it tantalizingly out of reach. 

He read it and quickly dipped his own hand into the paint and wrote his own right next to hers. 

"DouG RatTmann."

Doug Rattmann grinned at her as she read his name. It was so familiar. As if she had read it in a long forgotten book many times before. It was like meeting a friend after years apart. The way he wrote it, the way the paint dried, it was as if she were reliving an old conversation between the them.

She wanted to tell him everything, of her adventures. If it weren't for him, her bones would be charred and her ghost would haunt the panels. The thought kept popping up in her head, reoccurring so many times but it just made her appreciate his existence even more. 

She dipped her fingers in the black paint again, messily drawing a circle underneath their scribbled names. Instead it looked to be a ball of squished clay rather than a core. Chell tried to correct it by adding on the details. Finally, she dipped her fingers into the blue paint (which smelled like something decaying) and made a light blue optic.

He stared at it, apparently in thought. After a few seconds pause, he reached behind him and grabbed a can of paint. He stuck his forefinger into it and reached up. In the center of the blue eye, he left quite a menacing red dot.

Thoroughly confused at his edit to her drawing, she looked up at him through furrowed eyebrows, imploring him to go on. He didn't, just a shake it the head.

Frowning, she looked back at the painting and created another, far messier attempt at making the AI that they had woken up. Doug Rattmann had been aware of this, and tapped on the blue core. He didn't explain anything else, just gazing at her in warning. Chell looked back at it. She trusted this man with her life and had done on multiple accounts before. She wasn't going to ignore his judgement. She owned him too much. Looking back to his face, she nodded in promise to be careful.

After a few moments, Chell had gone back to looking past his scraggly face to the drying mural on the wall. Those were the outdoors. Something that she was always so close to touching, even breaking the surface, but was always dragged back down into the cold dark, hugging her knees. 

The mural looked beautiful. Not that Chell was an art critic, but it possessed the beauty that no one else could capture. Each stroke of the hand left behind longing of the world they couldn't never tough, the grass they could never smell, the fresh air they could never breathe, the trees they could never hear. It swallowed her up, giving her the urge to jump as high as she can and fly out of there into the outdoor's open arms. The hopes and dreams of the painter burned through the mural like the sun, with the sole purpose of her—Chell—being free.

But she was still in here, staring at a painting next to an invisible friend. Though the mural was missing something—someone. Why would Doug Rattmann want to stay down here? Would he truly escape this if she had done it too? Why was she so important in his life for his desires to be for only her to leave?

Once again, she dipped her fingers into the paint and drew it up to the painting. She was not an artist, far worse than Doug Rattmann. Her fingers drifted down the panel, creating a tall, spindly figure with hair wildly sticking up in clumps and donning a jacket. He stood next to Chell, watching the blue sky with her.

Doug Rattmann had fallen silent, watching her finish with his large, baggy eyes. He scooted once again next to her, continuing to stare at the pair basking in the light of freedom. 

He made a soft noise before throwing her into a hug again, although more gentle than before. It was more of a thank you, as the way his arms curled around her, it was as if he were pouring as much gratitude as he could onto her. She finally understood. It didn't need an explanation, but she understood. 

They continued to hug, two friends finally reunited, not wanting to let go.


End file.
